These people see a horrific video of a woman being degraded, insulted, and finally beaten, in which there is no sexual content at all, and all they can think of is "that's BDSM porn?" I quote from a comment quoted in the post:

Feminists would no longer be unanimous that scenes of him saying all those hateful things to a woman while doing specifically sexual violence to her on film were abuse. Some would defend it as sexual freedom. Some would praise it as transgressive BDSM erotica and therefore pro-woman.

The one thing I want to ask these people -- really, really want to ask -- is why everything is porn to them. Why everything is BDSM. I don't get it at all. It almost seems to me like they *want* these things to be porn. Like they *want* them to be sexual.

And that terrifies me. It terrifies me much more than the thought even of someone unapologetically hoarding and collecting pornography depicting mock torture and watching it over and over.

Because these people are sexualizing real abuse. And for all their indignance, I don't know why they would do that. It's like they're wishing she were naked, wishing she were being raped here, because it would serve their ends.

And how creepy is it that if it were depicting rape and beating, they would be watching it (over and over if my hunch is right), commenting on it, reproducing it, linking to it, pointing at it over and over to prove them right?

15 comments:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but did anyone actually say they got turned on by this? Don't you think the majority of BDSM people would be just as upset as you upon seeing this?There IS a huge difference between consent and non-consent. Otherwise, all sex would be rape.

I don't think these people represent "most people" at all. I'm deeply troubled by the "if she'd been naked, this would have been porn" logic. I'm troubled by people taking something horrible and deciding that, because they also think porn is horrible, this must be porn.

And yes, immediately linking something like this with pornography does strike me as sexualizing it. And that does worry me, even if no one is using it as if it were porn. I'm disturbed by the immediate link in these people's minds between this and sex.

He's not "talking dirty" as he would to a lover, he's mindlessly repeating "you heifer... you heifer... you heifer..." emotionlessly, like some sort of doll.

If you read the comments in the thread that follows the clip and post, it's pretty obvious that what's really under attack by Sam and her pals isn't the violence and abuse itself, or even porn itself, though certainly those are the identified targets. It isn't even BDSM, a sexual orientation for which they clearly have none of the respect they extend to same-sex preference or even, however grudgingly, conventional het sexuality.

The current axis of advance for APRFs runs directly at the notion of individual consent. They argue that women can't legitimately consent to sexual behavior outside the narrow confines of political correctness because the consent itself was compromised, either by cultural influences or by direct or indirect coercion specific to the particular situation or by the unrepresentative socioeconomic status of the woman insisting on that consent's legitimacy.

In other words, "real" women can't possibly consent to engage in sex work of any kind or non-vanilla sex in their private lives because only the most restrictive construction of sexual normality is truly native to all women everywhere.

If I, as a man, were to make such a claim on behalf of all women, I would rightly be condemned for my sexist arrogance. Who would I be to credit myself with such global insight into the "natural" sexuality of all women? Indeed, I would be, at best, a delusional fool.

So, who then are they to claim such knowledge?

Virtually every supportive comment to the original post contained whopping errors of fact about sex work, pornography and/or BDSM, flimsily supported by vague references to women who claimed to have consented to this or that behavior and later publicly recanted such claims, or apocryphal allusions to so-called "porn movies of thirteen-year-olds being raped and tortured" or unattributed citations of "research" supposedly demonstrating that coercive practices are the norm in the creation of licit pornography.

That these assertions are factually incorrect is as insignificant to those making them as the clear and obvious difference between the horrific violence recorded in the video clip and any form of consensual behavior, sexual or otherwise.

In the alternative universe of the APRFs, consent means ideological conformity, full-stop. Any behavior that goes against their ideology is, by definition, non-consensual.

This is a very dangerous way of thinking about anything, sexual or otherwise, for those who adhere to a minority opinion. Accusations of brain-washing or coercion are routinely employed by repressive elites to discredit contrarian voices of every stripe.

Nothing gets the charges of red herrings and straw men flying faster than the equation of women's ability to consent to sex work to their ability to consent to abortion. And yet opponents of reproductive choice make exactly the same arguments.

They argue that abortions are not freely chosen because the women having them are subject to economic hardship, pressure from partners, destructive cultural influences and/or a lack of moral consciousness.

You can't have it both ways. Either women are capable of making choices regarding their own bodies or they aren't. They can't be capable of legitimately signing a legal form consenting to an abortion without being equally capable of signing a model release.

Any person of reasonable intelligence understands that choices are not made in a vacuum and that many outside factors bear on the functioning of individual consent. However, the existence of such factors can't be taken to undermine the fundamental legitimacy of free choice in only a specific area of behavior without undermining it in principle.

What's most troubling about the equation of the criminal violence in the clip with BDSM or even the harshest legal pornography is that the wall of consent separating licit from illicit behavior is dismissed as a propagandistic invention. We're meant to conclude from this false association that women participating in the creation of pornography are no less victims of criminal assault than those subjected to domestic violence.

Leaving alone the utter lack of human compassion for victims of actual criminal assault revealed by such a spurious assertion, its acceptance can't help depriving women of agency in realms of behavior completely unrelated to sex work, reproductive choice or anything having to do with their anatomies whatsoever. It's an argument in favor of the genuinely misogynist view that women simply can't think for themselves and make their own decisions without the guidance of some superior collective intelligence.

Not only does this whole nonsensical confabulation morbidly sexualize simple brutality, it strips all women of the assumption of reason and personal identity to which every human being is entitled, reducing them to the mindless cyphers the very worst of woman haters believe them to be by nature.

If the thug in the video has any generalized ideas about women, they're much closer to the thinking of APRFs than to that of either pornographers or practitioners of BDSM.

"hey argue that women can't legitimately consent to sexual behavior outside the narrow confines of political correctness because the consent itself was compromised"

Yes, yes they do -- all they can ever say about consent is what vitiates it, never what makes it legitimate.

But the really creepy thing is that there's not even any *issue* of consent in this video. Since they don't understand what consent is, they can't see that this is not. Hence they have no problems saying "some people will see this as transgressive"

because they miss that what some people ARE saying is transgressive about their BDSM (which this is not, at all) IS that they CAN consent -- that they CAN claim whatever sexual fantasy and identity they want, in a world where that is frowned upon in women.

And that totally creeps me out.

"flimsily supported by vague references to women who claimed to have consented to this or that behavior and later publicly recanted such claims"

Yes, that. The only such reference I ever see that *isn't* vague is to Linda Marchiano. And, well, my heart goes out to her, but that was a very long time ago. Where's the proof that

1) her story revealed a general trend in the industry, rather than something about an abusive relationship in which the abuser made porn movies?

2) nothing's changed since? at all? even after Dworkin and MacKinnon put the issue of exploitation in porn on the table, made it an issue everyone's at least heard about?

and then of course there are the later statements by Marchiano that whatever she got out of APRFdom, they used her for their own ends as well, in ways that she didn't like. Which says a lot, IMO.

"What's most troubling about the equation of the criminal violence in the clip with BDSM or even the harshest legal pornography is that the wall of consent separating licit from illicit behavior is dismissed as a propagandistic invention."

I won't even go into the crass exploitation by Diane Sawyer (and yes, Dr. Socks and Sam, I did notice that this was actually taken from an ABC Primtime interview done last June with an abuse victim trapped with a cretin of a husband); or the overt racist overtones of the original piece.

But....it's this supposed connection between what this wonan endured and porn or BDSM that absolutely floors me.

"If she was naked, this would make a crackling good porn film"?!?!?!

"Some would defend it as sexual freedom. Some would praise it as transgressive BDSM erotica and therefore pro-woman"?!?!?!

There is still a fundamental difference between consensual BDSM (and consensual explicit sex media) and a prime=time depiction of a woman being degreded and abused (emphasis on DEPICTIONS).

But who cares about that...for Violet Socks and Sem Berg and the rest of the APRF fascist league, it's all about TEH SEX and TEH DICK, and twisting real-life situations around to fit into their ideology.

"But....it's this supposed connection between what this wonan endured and porn or BDSM that absolutely floors me."

Yeah. The original docu doesn't even mention rape. Not to say that this man didn't rape her. I can't imagine he didn't. But rape is not the major harm they mention here. WHich says, to me, that it's not the primary lens through which this woman looks at what happened to her. Or at least it's not being presented that way here.

Might the abuse dynamic be misrepresented? Sure, it might be, but it strikes me as just wrong and kind of creepy to be making up, out of whole cloth, what that part of this woman's life "must have" looked like, in order to make a point.

Why not focus on what she IS telling us about what she endured? Why not assume that she's telling her story and what SHE says matters, not what we read between the lines?

No, no, no, Trin...I wasn't quoting myself; I was quoting Bartow; who in an earlier time had threatened Quare Dewd (aka Bitch | Lab) with outting her and suing for libel when QD deconstructed some of Bartow's work.

That remark was Bartow, not mine; I actually heart QD...and kinda miss her.

"Now, anyone here who saw that clip and felt even a hint of sexual arousal, please raise your hand."

I watched it through the second time trying to imagine what might even possibly seem like it might be arousing to someone about it... and all I could come up with was "okay, some people do consensual breath play, and a depiction of THAT DONE CONSENSUALLY might arouse some people." But that's not what this IS. Which is what it floors me that these people don't get. This isn't breath play, this is SOMEONE CHOKING SOMEONE ELSE TO MAKE HER OBEY.

Oh, and this comment posted there says all that needs to be said about the attitudes behind Violet Socks's post:

Kiuku says:

You know I’m going to stop calling it rape porn or following it with porn because that seems to legitimize it, what it actually is. I’m going to call it “Men getting off to depictions of rape” or “men getting off to depictions of murder” instead of rape porn and murder porn. All porn is rape porn anyway.

The point though is this is the dialogue in porn. This is what men get off too. [sic] This is men’s dialogue about women.

Now, anyone here who saw that clip and felt even a hint of sexual arousal, please raise your hand.

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Why yes, this blog is dedicated to pro-porn activism! With the belief that pornography falls under the auspices free speech and expression, and is legitimate entertainment for consenting adults, if made for and by consenting adults. One, as a consenting adult, has the right to make and view pornography as they choose.